


new ways to fall apart

by barelyprolific



Category: Grey's Anatomy, Station 19 (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Compliant, Developing Friendships, First Meeting, Gen, M/M, Past Emmett Dixon/Travis Mongomery, Past Nico Kim/Levi Schmitt - Freeform, Post-Break Up, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26621797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barelyprolific/pseuds/barelyprolific
Summary: Travis’s words circled in his head, a whirlpool of thoughts and emotions that were pulling him under too quickly for Emmett to surface and make sense of anything.
Relationships: Emmett Dixon & Levi Schmitt, Emmett Dixon/Travis Montgomery, Nico Kim/Levi Schmitt
Comments: 23
Kudos: 78





	new ways to fall apart

**Author's Note:**

> I finally watched season three of Station 19, and I genuinely felt terrible for Emmett by the end of it. I also think he and Levi ended their respective seasons in a very similar place. I wanted to write about that, and about how they might react differently to their situations, and how they might react to one another...  
> This is not the start of a romance (although their ship name would be Lemmett), I just wanted to write two queer men supporting each other. 
> 
> Anyway. I'm a little rusty with the Greysverse, but I hope y'all enjoy.

It didn’t exactly feel  _ right _ , going to Joe’s bar, but Emmett didn’t really have anywhere else to go, either. Travis’s words circled in his head, a whirlpool of thoughts and emotions that were pulling him under too quickly for Emmett to surface and make  _ sense _ of anything.

His father was on his way to prison, probably for a long time. His ex-fiancée, also his best friend, wouldn’t answer his calls. He had quit his job. And Travis...didn’t love him. 

“Beer, please,” Emmett said, sliding onto the only open stool next at the bar. “Just...anything.”

“Sounds like a rough night.” 

There’s something familiar about the guy who spoke. Emmett turns a little to face him, taking in the soft, floppy hair, the slightly unkempt beard. He looks around his age, maybe a little older, and he has his own beer in front of him. He gives Emmett a small smile when their eyes meet, lifting his bottle. 

“More like a rough couple of months,” Emmett says, but he clinks his bottle against the stranger’s all the same after the bartender sets it down. After a couple of sips, he clears his throat, speaks again. “Hey, uh, you look--have we met before?”

Inwardly, Emmett winces. It sounds lame, like the laziest pick up line. The last thing Emmett wants to do at the moment is hook up with a stranger, and now it’s gonna seem like that’s exactly what he’s trying to do. 

Or maybe Emmett is just overthinking things, because the guy barely even blinks at the question, even shrugs a little.

“It’s possible. I work at Grey-Sloan, and I come in here a lot.”

“Oh, so you’re a doctor? That’s probably where I’ve seen you. I’m a firefighter.” Emmett pauses, takes another sip of his beer and then corrects, “I was a firefighter.”

“You’re not anymore?” He can’t tell if the interest behind the question is sincere or polite. Either way, Emmett’s invested in this conversation now. 

“Nope.” He takes another drink, downs half his bottle and sets it down hard enough to rattle the plate of peanuts on the bar. “I quit after I was held at gunpoint for drugs and the doctor we were riding with got shot. And then my dad turned out to be a corrupt, like, comic book villain, basically, and the guy I came out to be with doesn’t love me, and my best friend isn’t speaking to me, and since I quit being a firefighter, I don’t have a team to talk to about any of this. I have no job, no friends, and no boyfriend.” 

When Emmett doesn’t get an answer right away, he worries that he’s gone too far. A glance at his drinking companion, however, finds him being stared at by wide eyes and a gaping mouth. 

“What?” he asks, picking up his beer again. The doctor quickly averts his gaze, raising his own bottle to his lips. 

“I just…” He says, after he’s taken a drink, “I just didn’t expect to find someone whose situation is worse than mine here tonight.”

“Gee, that makes me feel so much better,” Emmett mutters, moving to get off his stool and find another seat. The guy stops him with a hand on his arm.

“Sorry, that came out wrong. Most of what I say does. What I meant was, I know how you feel, and it sucks, and I’m sorry.”

Slowly, Emmett sits back down, although he keeps one foot on the ground. The doctor offers him the hand not holding a bottle.

“I’m Levi.”

“Emmett,” he replies. “And I doubt you know how I feel.”

“Please,” Levi snorts, “My boyfriend of over a year and I broke up because I wanted more than sex out of our relationship. Before I met him, I didn’t even know I was gay, and he made me feel awful before we started dating about that, and about not being out, but then it turned out that he wasn’t out to his parents, and he kept...taking interviews for jobs that would mean moving out of Seattle without telling me about them. My mom isn’t speaking to me, my roommate is also my boss and even though she’s kind of nice to me at home, she’s really, really mean to me at work, and even at home it kind of feels like she’s only nice to me to make herself feel good. Most of my superiors think I’m terrible at my job, and my friends are still sort of mad at me about accidentally turning in one of our bosses for insurance fraud. Even if I don’t know exactly how you feel, I  _ know _ how you feel.” 

“...Jesus, man,” Emmett says after a pause, because he’s not sure what else to say. 

“I mean, I’m Jewish, so that’s not how I’d put it, but… Yeah. Basically. Jesus.” 

Emmett downs the rest of his beer and looks at Levi, lips twitching despite himself. 

“Jesus,” he repeats.

“Jesus,” Levi says again, finishing off his own bottle and slamming it down a little hard for emphasis. Emmett laughs, and Levi laughs, and for a minute or so, all there is for Emmett is that slight ache in his throat, a stinging of tears at the corner of his eyes, and laughter. When they’d both calmed down, Emmett raises his hand.

“Uh, two more, please.”

“Oh,” Levi begins, shaking his head, “You don’t need to do that.”

“Please,” Emmett says, “I want to.” 

Once they both have another beer, he raises his bottle towards Levi in a toast. 

“To us. Hopefully we’re the only two people at this bar feeling this way tonight.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Levi taps their bottles together, but sets his down before he actually takes a drink. “Did you really call your dad a comic book villain?”

“I did. I mean, it’s pretty accurate.” Emmett takes a long drink. “Accepting bribes, extorting people, cutting corners on inspections, endangering lives, all so he could line his pockets and get his pictures in the paper. And I was worried, you know, about making him proud. That’s why I became a firefighter. Why I stayed in the closet so long. Then he turns out to be frickin’... to be frickin’...”

“Harvey Dent?”

“Two-Face!”

“...Same person.”

“Oh. Right.” Emmett takes another drink. He's starting to feel kind of fuzzy. “The thing is… the thing is that I knew, you know? I knew my dad wasn’t the great guy he pretended to be. I knew that he… Was a jerk, at least. But he was my dad. He’s still my dad.”    


He can feel Levi shift next to him, and then his beer isn’t in his hand, and Levi’s face is right in front of his. He’s frowning.

“Why are you frowning?”

“Were you drinking before you came here?”

Emmett frowns. “I only had a couple.” 

“Yeah, okay.” 

His head is starting to swim a little, and his heels keep slipping off the rungs of the stool. Emmett wobbles, and has to catch himself with one hand on Levi’s shoulder, the other on the bar. Levi wraps an arm around his waist.

“I’m not looking to hook up,” Emmett tells him. He’s standing up. When did that happen?

“I don’t do one night stands,” Levi shoots back. There’s a pause, and Emmett’s ears are buzzing. Then Levi says, “I think,” but Emmett isn’t sure what it is he thinks. When he tries to ask, his tongue feels too thick to move. 

Things are happening in a blur. Emmett thinks they might be moving, either walking or in a car or...something else that moves without them needing to. The next really vivid experience he has is a cool glass against his lips, water wetting his tongue. He drinks it down and hands the glass back. Someone is taking his shoes off, and he’s being pushed down, covered with a blanket. The room is spinning, then the room is dark, and then there isn’t much of anything.

The smell of coffee rouses him, and Emmett wishes it hadn’t, because it brings with it hundreds of tiny men with hammers, trying to mine his brain for...something it probably doesn’t even have. The ceiling he blinks his eyes open to stare at is not his ceiling. The couch, Emmett realizes when he turns his head, that he is lying on is not his couch. 

“Don’t try to sit up too fast,” A vaguely familiar voice says, close to him, and then there is a hand on his shoulder, and Emmett is looking up into a face. A bearded, friendly-seeming, kind of cute face. “Here, drink this.”

He’s handed a glass of water and allowed to sit up just enough to drink it. It doesn’t make the tiny men go away, but they seem less angry to be working. 

“Thanks,” he rasps when he’s finished, handing the glass back. “Uh…”

“Levi.”   


“Levi, right.” Bits and pieces of the night before come back to him. They met at the bar. Emmett doesn’t think they had sex, though. “Where am I?”

“My apartment. Or, uh. Jo’s apartment, which I am currently staying in until I find my own place.” 

“Joe’s your boyfriend? I thought Joe’s was the bar?” Emmett wants more water. He wants to call Travis and beg him to reconsider. Maybe he is in love with Emmett, and he just hasn’t thought about it enough to realize it. 

“Joe’s is the bar, Jo is my female roommate. Slash sort of boss.” 

“Sounds complicated.” Where is his phone? Emmett starts feeling his pockets, hoping he didn’t leave it at the bar.

“So, listen…” Pausing, Emmett looks at Levi. Something on his face makes him sit up a little more, swallow. “Last night… The guy you were telling me about. I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but I think you should let him go. Take it from me, okay, it doesn’t matter how much you’re willing to work things out if he isn’t, too.”

Emmett opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. His shoulders slump, and he rubs a hand over his face. 

“Is that what you’re doing? Letting your guy go?”

“I’m trying to.” Levi moves, sits next to him. Even with his hand covering his eyes, Emmett knows how close he is, and can feel his warmth. “You seem like a nice guy. You deserve a guy who loves you back. We both do.”

“No offense, but you’re not really my type.”

Levi laughs, and Emmett lowers his hand. Cracks an eye open. 

“I don’t think you’re mine, either. I’m not thinking it has to be me, just because we’re two gay guys in similar sucky situations. I’m just saying that it’s true. And that maybe we can be friends while we look for those guys. It seems like we could both use one, and I’ve...never had another gay guy for a friend.” 

Emmett lowers his hand all the way, looking at Levi, really looking. The guy brought him home because he was too drunk to stand, took care of him, and is giving him a pep talk.

Maybe he could use a friend like Levi.

Emmett holds out his hand for him to shake. 

“Yeah, okay,” he says when Levi takes it. “Friends.” 

Levi’s smile, it turns out, is kind of contagious.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos are nice, but taking a few seconds to leave a comment is true generosity.


End file.
